Air Bags for Lifting a Concrete Cylinder

[BLANK_AUDIO] [NOISE] >> Hi. I'm Paul DeBartolomeo. Welcome to Training Minutes. In this segment, we're gonna deal with a construction accident. As we can see here, we have a large concrete drainage cylinder. Construction worker has gotten his legs pinned under the cylinder. This cylinder weighs several thousand pounds and, as we can see, it's round, so it's inherently gonna be unstable. The challenge we're gonna have in lifting this is to keep this cylinder stable so it doesn't roll one direction or the other. The first thing we need to do is begin stabilization of this cylinder. The firefighters are gonna come in and place a wedge under the bell housing. It's gonna be the first step we do in stabilization. The next thing we do is we're gonna set our step shocks. In this scenario the step chocks are going to act as our main body of stabilization. [SOUND] When we set our step chocks, we've got to try to offset them on the pipe. We don't want our step chocks to but together when we lift this pipe. That's going to negate some of our stabilization. So we wanna take a mark and ensure tha they're offset on either side of the pipe, okay? Because this pipe has a tendency to roll one direction or the other, we're gonna utilize a six foot hook to keep the firefighters out of the potential zone where this pipe could roll. Our pipe is now stabilized. We're gonna get down and set our bags. For this scenario, I've chosen to use a 15 ton bag. Mainly because of the shape. The rectangular shape is going to allow me to set that in there and it's going to give me more surface area. I want to try and set the bag under the pipe as close to the victim as possible. Ok? As we can see, we're working with an angled pipe so what we want to try to do is get that bag up on an angle so that it contacts the underside of the pipe. In order to do that we're going to take a four by four block, lift the bag up. [NOISE] >> Slide the block in so that the bag comes securely, snugly, with the underside of the pipe. Now, in order to prevent that block from kicking out, when we inflate this bag, there's gonna be a tremendous downward pressure. That downward pressure is likely to push that block out. In order to prevent that. I'm gonna take our wedges and wedge this block in place. [SOUND] All right we want to ensure that both sides are set uniformly. The far side, the bag is set good. Our side here looks to be set and locked in, we're ready to start to lift this pipe. As we lift, the two firefighters manning the step chalks are gonna use the six foot hooks and continually push those step chalks in as we gain lift. All right, we're just about ready to perform this lift. What we've done on our controller, is we've employed the use of the Y, so that we can get even air dispersed to both bags. In addition to that we've added an inline shutoff to the Y, so that if one bag makes contact earlier than the other bag or one bag begins to inflate a little more, we can shut that bag down and inflate the other bag to even it out. We really want to stress an even controlled lift here. Because of the natural round shape of the pipe we don't wanna send this pipe in motion. So we've employed a Y in the in line shutoffs on our controller. We're all set, we're ready to lift this pipe. >> Up slow. Stop. Up slow. Stop, lock off green, up on red, slow, stop. All right, as you can see, we've got our desired height that we could get this, this construction worker out. What we wanna do now is capture the load before we do the extrication. So, if we come down on the airbags, the step shocks will carry the load. Come down on the bags. [BLANK_AUDIO] The bags are free of the pipe. [SOUND] We can move them out. [SOUND] [BLANK_AUDIO] [SOUND] We'll come in. And begin extricating this patient, Again we want to focus on c spine and mobilization. We're going to use a long board. We're going to try to get it under his trunk and get him out from underneath this pipe. As we can see this is a very coordinated evolution. We've really got to take our time inflating our bags so we prevent that movement of this cylinder rolling. Stabilization is a key here, 'kay, step chocks are big, wedges are big, we wanna prevent this cylinder from shifting one way or the other. We only have to lift about three or four inches, which is very easy to achieve. I'm Paul DiBarthomelew, thanks for watching training minutes.